Observations on politics, news, culture and humor

Bailing out the privileged class, pt. IV

Isn’t it great when someone else does the research you were too busy to do? Timothy Carney from the Washington Examiner has a dynamite piece on the sickening intersection of the Democratic Party and public sector unions in the form of Obama’s proposed $50 billion bailout for state and local governments (which The Country Estate has already covered here and here and here).

Ready for an “ugh” moment?:

Government employee unions — through their employees and political action committees — have contributed more money to congressional candidates this election than all the PACs, executives and employees of the entire oil industry, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Because 92 percent of public-employee union money goes to Democrats, President Obama’s party has raised more money from these unions this cycle than Republicans have raised from Wall Street.

Along the same lines, local and state governments have spent more on lobbying this year than the health insurance industry or defense contractors.

By any measure, local and state governments and public sector unions are an entrenched special interest. By any measure, they are also the prime beneficiary of President Obama’s latest $50 billion spending proposal.

How about an “ugh” encore:

State governments have overspent, largely on salaries that far exceed those in the private sector and benefits packages that dwarf what most Americans get. So now those governments are spending their money on powerful high-dollar lobbyists, with the paramount goal of getting access to more federal money. But the federal government is hopelessly in deficit.

The result is this: Local government officials are using your money to hire former government officials to ask current federal officials to give local governments more federal money — and future taxpayers will foot the bill for this whole racket.

This isn’t a Democrat or Republican thing; Democrats hand money to their union hack buddies the same way Republicans might hand money to their defense contractor hack buddies. It’s a cronyism thing. Using emotionalist scare tactics to transfer money from hard-working people to your campaign donors is always going to be bad, but it’s even worse when that sort of cronyism is going on in a recession, as our budget deficit continues to soar.